The Complete Muhammad Aliis a Fascinating Portrait of the Twentieth Century and the Beginning of the Twenty-First
“Great,” James Baldwin Ishmael Reed “Great,” Sam Tanenhaus, The New York Times The Complete “Great,” Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic Wire A “modern-day Molière,” Backstage More than a biography and ‘bigger than boxing,’ The Complete Muhammad Aliis a fascinating portrait of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. MUHAMMAD ALI Ishmael Reed calls it The Complete Muhammad Ali because most of the hundred odd books about the champion are “either too adoring or make excessively negative assertions.” One biography blames Ali, along with Gerald Ford, for losing Vietnam, Ishmael Reed another calls him a “malicious buffoon,” while others—The Ali Scribes—make him into a Saint. Charting Ali’s evolution from Black Nationalism to a universalism, Reed gives due credit to the Nation of Islam’s and Black Nationalism’s important influence on Ali’s intellectual development. Instead of being dismissed as “lunatics” and “thugs,” Black The Complete Nationalists and Nation of Islam members are given a chance to speak up. Sam X, who introduced Ali to the Nation of Islam, said that without his mentor Elijah Muhammad, nobody would ever have heard of Ali. That remark cannot be ignored. The Ali phenomenon is also situated in the history of boxing and boxers from before the times of Jack Johnson, through Joe Louis and Archie Moore to Floyd MUHAMMAD ALI Mayweather. Reed includes Canadian fighters like Tommy Burns, George Chuvalo and Yvon Durelle. People interviewed include Marvin X, Harry Belafonte, Hugh Masakela, Jack Newfield, Ed Hughes, Emmanuel Steward, Amiri Baraka, Emil Guillermo, Khalilah Ali, Quincy Troupe, Rahaman Ali, Agieb Bilal, Melvin Van Peebles, Ray Robinson, Jr., Ed Hughes, Jesse Jackson, Martin Wyatt, Bennett Johnson, Stanley Crouch, Bobby Seale, and many more.
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